Jun 5, 2024

YoYo and Firewall Rework - Patch 1.5 Live Now!

Chess Survivors - Aarimous

Hey there,

This patch it directly based on feedback from you players and I think the changed to YoYo and Firewall make the game far more fun to play. Keep the feedback coming and I'll keep making changes. So If you do have feedback, please leave it over on the Steam discussions or over in my discord.

Thanks for playing my little game,
Aarimous

1.5 Patch Notes

tl;dr; YoYo Ability and Firewall Reworks, QOL changes, random balance stuff, and bugs

Yo-Yo Ability Rework:

Removed the duration and will now only spin around the character once during the ability phase of the turn.
Remove upgrades for turn duration
Changed upgrades for cooldown from 8, 7, 6, 4→ 4, 3, 2, 1
Increased the damage from 30,55, 90, 150 → 50, 70, 110, 175
Increased the scale upgrades, but I can’t remember what the old values were
Adjusted the logic so that scale increase only increase the distance way from the player at 60% of their value. This is to prevent the yoyo from missing adjacent tiles as the scale increases
Increasing the scale no long increases the radius as well. The was how it previously worked, but after the AOE update it seems to have made it feel fairly bad.
Previously the Yo-Yo would spin at a set rate for a set duration of turns, while this made it a fairly unique ability it realistically was just fundamentally flawed with the idea of quick turns and how the other abilities work.
As such I’ve gone a head and changed it, as it’s no fun when one ability is just clearly better than the rest.
Plus to get the most power out of the Yo-Yo you needed to sit still and wait, which again is not fun. And I want to make this a fun game.
Please let me know if it feel bad or weak and I can add more power to it.

Firewall Hazard Rework:

Removed the rotation effect so now the fire balls will simply spawn on a tile and remain there until their turn durations is over (or they explode due to the player hitting it).
Previously the firewalls would spawn in and then the line of fireballs would rotate clockwise during the players movement turn.
My goal was to push the player to think quick, but hearing some feedback from players this goal was not met, and these firewall hazard just feel bad. So I changed them.

Misc:

Increased the XP per level growth from 4-5 and lowered the base XP amount from 5 to 4. This should have a small impact to the “end game” level you can reach but I don’t think it will be all that noticeable
Added a new text popup when a movement power up is consumed that will show the type of movement and the amount of turns added
I have changed the arrow for the pawns movement direction to be a bit clearer
Added the ability description to the ability tooltip
Minion with turn durations will now respawn at the start of the players movement phase instead of at the start of the ability phase. Functionally this gives them one more turn to act and should just make it easily to plan your movement around them.
Changed the Smol Wizard to now start with the YoYo ability instead of Pai Sho
When using a mouse you can now hover over the ability icons and relic icons to see their tooltips

Bugs:

Fixed an issue for keyboard and mouse where you can’t hover over the relics/abilities on level up
Fixed Matin’s names so is not all caps
Fixed the text for Gambit Level 1 to not have “enabled” twice
Fixed the art for the Fish Bowl character to have a non-outline version when in the character select screen
Fixed a bug where starting a new run could crash the game
Fixed another bug where the game over screen could cause the game to crash if you didn’t win the game.

Endless Mode:

Endless mode new act modifiers will now increase far more as you go deeper into endless acts. Previously each act would scale the act mods by 33% more and now that is 200%. Let’s see if it’s hard now. 🙂
You no long gain XP again after finishing endless mode
Long standing oversight that I finally fixed

Jun 5, 2024

NeoDuel: Demo Patch Notes (Version 0.7.0) - Steam Next Fest Edition

NEODUEL: Backpack Monsters - The 4 Winds Entertainment

It’s been a wild couple of days since our last patch note, but in case you missed it, we have a new publishing partner - The 4 Winds Entertainment - who will support us as we get NeoDuel closer to the finish line and onward. That means our patch notes will become a bit more “fun” and clear, and follow certain formatting for better accessibility.

This upcoming patch for the NeoDuel demo is slightly heavier on content, since we’ll be highlighted in the upcoming Steam Next Fest. Our team has been hard at work adding a plethora of new content and features, a reshape to the existing meta but without breaking some of the top duelist builds out there… Just, you know, stopping some exploits, while keeping things fresh.

NEW CONTENT FOR THE GAME:

New Feature: Battle Log

A lot of Duelists wanted this, and we finally did it. You can now see which of your Cosmion did the most damage or synergy, and find out the weaker chain in the link. It’s a full log feature that splits data into damage count, healing and shield values, and other effects applied. We will be listening to all of you Duelists’ feedback on this feature, and work toward a more complex or tweaked version of the Battle Log as we get closer to the full launch.

New Feature: Fusion Bond

" Fuuu...sion..HA!”

Alright, you probably guessed by now that we're a bunch of weebs. We love the fusion abilities of our beloved Cosmions, but some of you felt like the outcome of fusing wasn't clear. With the Fusion Bond, you can now see which Cosmions can fuse together, and the potential outcome.

New Feature: Additional Keyboard Shortcuts

Added the ability to rotate Cosmions using the Q and E keys.
Added the ability to quickly send Cosmions to the bag with the S key or the Mouse Right Click

New Cosmions

We have been working hard on designing and bringing new critters into the game which will increase the depth, enhance your Duelist experience and fill all the blanks a potential build could have.
We start with unique Cosmions, which are found in the Fire, Water and Air elemental category, but missing in the rest. With this patch 0.7.0 codename Steam Fest, all elements have their “ultimate” Cosmions including:

Z E U S: Powered by the iconic electric deity, each energy you generate will add damage to that Cosmion.
Faeris: The God of nature is here to protect you. This Cosmion increases all shields you gain
Revlana: No elemental power doesn’t mean weakness. This Cosmion grows in strength the more you have a variety of other elements in play.

Other than that, we’ve added some a set of 8 new Cosmions to spice things up:

Pedro: Pedro, Pedro, Pedro, Pedro, Pè. A common attacker that uses a lot of energy but hits really hard.
Stonks Doge: A new fusion-based Cosmum lets you use those useless stonks tigresses in a useful way.
ChugChug: We heard that there are energy problems, which we think will be solved with this fusion Cosmium!
Arthur: Coming from the wild depth, this gunslinger will solve those pesky flow problems by converting your energy into flow!
Meteor Klood: The long awaited Fire elemental cloud that was missing from the “kloodline”. It will inflict 1 fog, 2 burn and 2 Lava Burn.
Ishu: Kawaii! A Cosmiun disguised as a sushi, and acts as a defender for - mostly - Fire duelist. Each time you inflict a debuff to your enemy, you recover 1 health
Pyrophyte: A tree shaped Cosmion which gathers strength by burning inside out. Everytime you deal burn damage to the enemy, it gains shield.
Harmonion: Fight water with fire? Turns your flow into burn, allowing for some interesting builds.

Developer’s Note: As our current Duelists keep playing the game, we have noticed some problems that aren’t balancing problems, but rather a lack of pieces to finish the puzzle, and those are new Cosmions. As we continue to update this demo, and march towards the full launch, we will keep experimenting with unique Cosmions, in hope it will boost your imagination and wildess builds.

New Zone: Heart

Zones can bring some interesting changes to gameplay, and this new Heart Zone is a big pill of vitamins. For every Cosmion with a passive effect in this zone, your Duelist will gain 10 HP on top of your cap.

IMPROVEMENTS & ADJUSTMENTS

Onboarding and Tutorial

A lot of the community feedback made us realize that the first-time user experience is not where we want it to be. We’re constantly improving on that front, and tweaked the previous tutorial by timing better the on-screen messaging based on Duelist actions, as well as adding an explanation of the Cosmion description card. This is not yet reflective of the final form of the tutorial for the full launch, so keep that feedback coming!

Upgrade Balancing

As we launched the first version of the demo, we noticed that plenty of upgrades were not balanced at all, and we didn't really implement the best system for them. To resolve that, we are going to be separating each stage of upgrades into their own tier, from 1 to 3. Upgrades get more valuable as you progress in the duels, and you will feel it as well. We are also bringing some new upgrades to change the pace on that front.

Unique Cosmion Pricing Reduced

Unique cosmions are those you could only get from upgrades, yet had a price tag of 30. We realized from our data that they were becoming tools to pick and sell, so we reduced their cost to 20.

Cosmion & Essence Balancing & Changes

Fire-based Cosmion & Essence

Ifry burn per link has been reduced from 2 to 1
Ifraltus burn per link has been reduced from 3 to 2
Rare Fire Essence burn effect has been reduced from 3 to 2
Epic Fire Essence burn effect has been reduced from 6 to 4
Porgur cost reduced from 2 to 1

Developer's note: Let's talk about the typical fire build here, because there are a couple changes we are bringing into this element to tweak things for Duelists. There are two big problems with Fire builds at the moment: it is very easy to play efficiently, and there is A LOT of starting Burn effect. This is not what we want for a ramping build, so we’re removing a lot of initial Burn effects. To not shatter all current builds, we are also adding some new elemental optimized units so seasoned Duelists can still bring the summer heat.

Firefist link effect has been upgraded from 2 to 3
Moltenpunch link effect has been upgraded from 4 to 5

Developer's note: Firefist build is the least popular line in the game according to our stats. Reducing a start build will disrupt too much the meta, so we wanted to make sure you still aim for a perfect link, without removing THAT much burn effect.

Fire Mira damage has been reduced from a range of 6-8 to 5-7
Yogan damage has been reduced from a range of 7-10 to 6-8

Developer's note: With the new Cosmions we’re introducing in the Fire category, some base damage from the most used ones needed to be tweaked.

Nature Based Cosmion & Essence

Spiry energy cost per attack has been reduced from 3 to 2
Abatis cost has been reduced from 6 to 5

Developer's note: For Spiry, the intended gameplay was for a Duelist to put more of them in play to eventually take advantage of the fusion, but currently, even if you had no other Cosmions, you would be out of energy. This didn't quite make sense so we had to introduce this fix.

Air-based Cosmion & Essence

Volucris reworked: Changed fusion from Yekrut + Ageccus + Epic Air Essence to now Yekrut + Clepius. Its cooldown is bigger, changing from 3 to 4, and the on-hit haste was removed.
Volucris’ passive “Giving critical stats to the linked Cosmion” is now “On attack phase give the linked Cosmion 20% critical damage change”.

Developer's note: The Air elemental big boy was a little hard to reach and too important in winduelists, discouraging them to trade. What we are doing is making it a lot easier to fuse a Volucris, and tuning him accordingly. The old passive ability felt limiting for duelists, as most didn’t want to apply critical stats to a linked Cosmion. This one will lead to stronger end-game boards for more fun late duels.

Electric based Cosmion & Essence

Belestra Rework: Changed fusion from Wasbuz + rare nature + rare electric essence to now Wasbuz + Rare Nature. Its cooldown has changed from 2 to 5, Stamina from 2 to 4, Damage range from a range of 15-21 to 18-22 and finally added 20% innate critical chance.

Developer's note: Do we even need to explain this one? Belestra has been a very strong Cosmion that needed to be contained so it doesn’t go berserk. The tweaks are meant for it to be easier to fuse, but still keep him fun to play.

Zapp cost reduced from 3 to 2
Tesla cost reduced from 9 to 8

Developer’s note: Most of our original testers and alpha demo Duelists remember the “nuke it tesla” build, which was VERY scary. For those lucky enough to have not witnessed that dark era, that build could sort of one-shot you at the start of the duel. WE DO NOT want to see those ever again, but we do feel like we overdid it with the previous changes, so we’re balancing to a nice middle ground.

Neutral based Cosmion & Essence

Demoncore-Omnicore link amount changes from 4 to 6 to be fully activated.

Developer's note: Our team loves these 2 Cosmions, but our internal stats reveal that they are being used too often based on how easily they can be linked. To make sure they are not activated EVERY time a Duelist buys them in the shop, we had to up the link cap for a full activation to now 6, and might add more if we feel these are still too easy.

Water-based Cosmion & Essence

Common Water Essence flow reduced from 3 to 2
Rare Water Essence flow reduced from 5 to 4
Epic Water Essence flow reduced from 9 to 8

Developer's note: Similar to the changes brought to the Fire essences, we realized that Duelists are using too much Essences in comparison with Cosmions, which isn’t really their purpose in the game (you are a monster tamer after all).

For us, Essences are complimentary slots into your backpack, while Cosmions are your priority. Essences only take 1 slot and are used in fusions, which make them on par with the core mechanic of a Cosmion but at a reduced cost. This change to the Water essences should keep that trend down, and we will constantly monitor the situation.

BUG SMASHED!

Bargain Master: We discovered an unintended loop that could be considered an exploit by our system, between fusions of David E. Sence and the Bargain Master upgrade. This ability has been dropped in the bin to keep the in-game economy healthy… Plus, there’s a big chance you didn’t even discover it.
Numerous bugs squished in the background that haven't done that much damage for Duelist… Those darn sneaky bugs.

For the most recent news, join the NeoDuel community by following us on Twitter or hopping into the T4W Discord server. Please contact our support channel on the T4W Discord server if you need assistance with typical technical issues or if you are unable to resolve your problem. Till then, keep on dueling, and good luck!

Jun 5, 2024

Weapons and vehicles of the "Rzhev" update

Enlisted - [CM] Ungorisz

The novelties of the "Rzhev" update will surely leave no one indifferent: very big guns and interesting new vehicles — for all countries. Let us tell you about them!

KV-2 (1940) (BR IV) | USSR

It needs no introductions. The legend with its 152mm howitzer is now in Enlisted!

The Kliment Voroshilov tanks were a deadly surprise for the Germans at the beginning of the war. Almost impenetrable to early German guns, these machines could single-handedly hold off the advance of dozens of tanks.

The KV-2 is an assault modification of the legendary vehicle. Not every heavy tank can withstand the 5 kilograms of explosives in its shell. The presented 1940 modification has a machine gun in the turret — so you won’t get bored while reloading.

The tank is crewed by 6 well-trained tankers and the squad will be purchasable for Gold in the game.

8,8 cm Flak 37 Sfl. (BR IV) | Germany

The Flak 37, which can shoot down aircraft and tear armored targets to shreds in direct fire mode with equal ease, is an anti-aircraft gun and the main armament of this heavy tractor. You are already familiar with the capabilities of the 8,8 cm cannon, which is similar to the Tiger’s.

The open platform significantly simplifies the gun crew's work, so you can expect a much faster reload rate compared to the Tiger tank.

The crew of the tractor is also well-protected. The driver and commander are in an armored cabin, while the gunners are behind a sturdy gun shield.

One piece of advice though: when turning sideways, be mindful of the ammunition stowed in the rear box. The crew consists of 6 tankers, and the squad will be purchasable for Gold in the game.

And now on to the novelties that you can unlock. You can find these in the research trees of their respective countries!

USSR

I-185 (М82) (BR V)

This Soviet monoplane with 20mm cannons becomes the new top fighter in the USSR's research tree.

It has quite decent maneuverability and thrust-to-weight ratio - after turning it can easily reach its maximum speed again.

Its three 20mm cannons are loaded with 560 rounds, while two 250kg bombs await their turn under the wings.

Т-34-57 (1943) (BR III)

A new addition for the middle Battle Rating!

A late T-34 variant with a hexagonal turret and a 57mm cannon - good penetration and fire rate. Its arsenal includes armor-piercing high-explosive ballistic capped and high-explosive shells.

In all other aspects, the tank shares the advantages of other T-34s: decent armor against early German guns, good mobility and off-road capability.

Important! You'll find this vehicle in the folder alongside the T-34 (1941). This means that this tank is an optional research.

Germany

Pz.IV G (BR III)

One of the most mass-produced modifications of the Pz.IV tank — with reinforced frontal hull armor and minor cosmetic changes compared to the previous F2 modification.

This variant differs from the Stalingrad version in its limited selection of shells (armor-piercing capped ballistic capped and high-explosive) and the lack of additional track armor on the upper hull plate.

Owners of the old "Battle of Stalingrad - Full access pack": The old Pz.IV G will be renamed to Pz.IV G "Stalingrad" and will receive armor-piercing capped ballistic capped, high-explosive anti-tank, and armor-piercing composite rigid shells, a corresponding designation in the kill log, as well as a few decorative changes to make it stand out on the battlefield.

USA

T20 rifle (BR V)

The long-awaited automatic rifle for the Western Allies chambered for a full-size cartridge.

This experimental rifle combines the Garand’s damage with a decent 710 rounds per minute fire rate (when upgraded). The key difference of this early version from the T20E1 is the absence of a bipod and firing from an open bolt.

M4A3E2 (76) W (BR V)

The Jumbo has the strongest frontal hull armor among the tanks of its family, but not the best gun. Its long-barreled version was long overdue.

The 76mm gun with armor-piercing capped ballistic capped, high-explosive and armor-piercing composite rigid shells in its arsenal makes it a real threat to Panthers and other German tanks, which will have a hard time penetrating it anywhere except for its weak spots.

Japan

KE7 (BR III)

This Swiss machine gun from SIG, exported to many countries, traveled through numerous battlefields, just to eventually end up in the hands of soldiers of the Japanese army.

In terms of damage and rate of fire, it’s similar to the American Brownings, and even surpasses them in magazine capacity. 25 rounds - not kidding.

Chi-To (BR IV)

A Japanese tank with a long barrel cannon capable of engaging most American Shermans. It’s based on the Chi-Nu tank, the similarity in the hull’s shape is easily noticeable. At the same time, the tank received a bit more armor protection and almost did not lose any of its mobility.

In the research tree, it is placed directly before the Ho-Ri Production.